S Peter, when he wrote his Catholic Epistle, envisaged danger as likely to come from the attentions of the Enemy who tamquam leo rugiens circuit. However, despite PF's pleas for Biodiversity, imaginative plans to reintroduce lions into the English countryside are not currently in the forefront of our public debate. Nor are we likely to release the small pox from its incarceration, or to launch battalions of genetically enhanced rats infected with the Black Death. Rigid Pharisaical obscurantism is thus still preventing the full and generous implementation of Laudato si. O we of little faith. But the Holy Father would undoubtedly be delighted to know that wolves now howl nightly around the precincts of Douai Abbey.
I have returned from the Abbey after preaching a retreat to a select group of highly intelligent ladies, one at least of whom was awakened at night by the authentically Gothick experience of the wolfpack discussing Brexit. Fr Guestmaster reassured us that, although one of the pack had escaped from its enclosure not long ago and had still not returned from its Annual Break, dangers were but minimal. I chased out of my fevered imagination a naughty fantasy that Father might himself be a werewolf just on the point of ...
I like Douai. Cardinal Allen greets you in Reception ... what a great Englishman and Oxonian he was. Cardinal Archbishop of Canterbury and Lord Chancellor of England ... but for a faulty weather forecast. I just love his cheerful and reassuring prediction that, in the days after the success of the Armada, not many of the Protestant governing class might have survived. And round the walls of the Guest Refectory (good food) hang portraits of an Alternative England which, so sadly, never got its chances. Queen Mary of Modena's Almoner in Paris ... Bishop Richard Smith, who is described in his picture as Totius Angliae et Scotiae Ordinarius (same title as Mgr Newton's) ... Deans of the Old Chapter (now, 'Brotherhood') of the English Clergy, that august body of most superior men ... et tot alii totque clarissimi. Along the corridors hang monks who enjoyed the evocative style of (Titular) Abbot of Westminster. In the Library, serried ranks of English Recusant gentlewomen who founded and ruled English convents in the Low Countries. Formidable ladies; I would rather face the wolves than their disapprobation.
That Catholic England never got beyond being what you might call a Platonic Idea. But you can almost catch a glimpse of it at Douai.
30 November 2018
29 November 2018
Signum magnum ...
Tuesday's celebration of the Miraculous Medal ... and the very tasty Mass formula, with its allusions to the Johannine theology of the semeia ['Signs'] of the Lord ... inspired me to ask our Supplex Omnipotentia, our blessed Lady of Cana, for a Sign to strengthen the afflicted Church of which she is herself such a beautiful and powerful Sign.
I must confess that when I opened my computer on Wednesday morning I felt that my prayer had been answered. Lifesitenews provided the reactions of orthodox prelates to the current homosexualist furore. I have to single out the magnificent disdain of the magnificent Cardinal Mueller ("... effusions of an academic nobody..."); in the next pontificate, whatever role that man has, he must surely be involved in cleaning out the Augean Stables which PF has chosen ... such a strange predilection ... to inhabit.
And my eye was particularly caught by the piece from Bishop Athanasius Schneider. Two points.
(1) He situates the homosexualist onslaught in terms of heresy. I think this is massively important. We should not let the machinations of a very nasty lobby obscure the fact that many people with a same-sex orientation live lives of heroic sanctity. By grace they triumph over temptation and are an example to ... to take just one example ... those heterosexuals who unchastely corrupt the marital act.
The current movement among some sick members of the Church to validate homosexual genital activity is far more evil in its conceptual roots than it is in particular disordered physical actions which, after all, are after repentance mercifully absolved. It is heretical because it overthrows the Natural Order and thus attempts to set individual autonomy above the Sovereign Rights of our Creator and Redeemer. Obvious stuff. Forgive me for labouring what readers will already know very well. Some of you will recall Archbishop Lefebvre's great cry They have uncrowned Him.
(2) Bishop Schneider writes "We have to notice an eclipse in the Papal exercise of this very task of strengthening the truth regarding homosexuality". Observe the words eclipse in the papal exercise ... . This is highly reminiscent of the phrase of Blessed John Henry Newman suspense of the function of the Ecclesia Docens. He used it in his analysis of the Arian Controversy, when most of the episcopate, including Pope Liberius, ceased to exercise their function of using their Teaching Authority. When complaints were made to Rome about his words, our great English Blessed made clear that he was not suggesting popes or bishops had lost their Magisterial authority, but observing, as a matter of historical fact, that for forty or more years they had chosen not to exercise it. Rome, wisely, did not intervene against him!
This is very close to where we are now. As Bishop Schneider is pointing out. No wonder they want to stop him travelling. Long live his airmiles!
And I liked Fr Fessio's suggestion that PhD means Philosophische Dumheit. These people need to be laughed at.
Exhilarating, Yes? A battle worth joining in, Yes? Nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus, Yes?
I must confess that when I opened my computer on Wednesday morning I felt that my prayer had been answered. Lifesitenews provided the reactions of orthodox prelates to the current homosexualist furore. I have to single out the magnificent disdain of the magnificent Cardinal Mueller ("... effusions of an academic nobody..."); in the next pontificate, whatever role that man has, he must surely be involved in cleaning out the Augean Stables which PF has chosen ... such a strange predilection ... to inhabit.
And my eye was particularly caught by the piece from Bishop Athanasius Schneider. Two points.
(1) He situates the homosexualist onslaught in terms of heresy. I think this is massively important. We should not let the machinations of a very nasty lobby obscure the fact that many people with a same-sex orientation live lives of heroic sanctity. By grace they triumph over temptation and are an example to ... to take just one example ... those heterosexuals who unchastely corrupt the marital act.
The current movement among some sick members of the Church to validate homosexual genital activity is far more evil in its conceptual roots than it is in particular disordered physical actions which, after all, are after repentance mercifully absolved. It is heretical because it overthrows the Natural Order and thus attempts to set individual autonomy above the Sovereign Rights of our Creator and Redeemer. Obvious stuff. Forgive me for labouring what readers will already know very well. Some of you will recall Archbishop Lefebvre's great cry They have uncrowned Him.
(2) Bishop Schneider writes "We have to notice an eclipse in the Papal exercise of this very task of strengthening the truth regarding homosexuality". Observe the words eclipse in the papal exercise ... . This is highly reminiscent of the phrase of Blessed John Henry Newman suspense of the function of the Ecclesia Docens. He used it in his analysis of the Arian Controversy, when most of the episcopate, including Pope Liberius, ceased to exercise their function of using their Teaching Authority. When complaints were made to Rome about his words, our great English Blessed made clear that he was not suggesting popes or bishops had lost their Magisterial authority, but observing, as a matter of historical fact, that for forty or more years they had chosen not to exercise it. Rome, wisely, did not intervene against him!
This is very close to where we are now. As Bishop Schneider is pointing out. No wonder they want to stop him travelling. Long live his airmiles!
And I liked Fr Fessio's suggestion that PhD means Philosophische Dumheit. These people need to be laughed at.
Exhilarating, Yes? A battle worth joining in, Yes? Nunc pede libero pulsanda tellus, Yes?
28 November 2018
Eric Kemp and the purpose of an Ordinariate in a Bergoglian Church
Today is the Year's Mind of the Right Reverend the Father in God Eric Waldram Kemp, sometime Lord Bishop of Chichester.
Memories crowd in: of the day when, by an act of quasi-papal primacy (immediate and ordinary and episcopal, and so dead in line with Vatican I), George Carey sent a Guildford suffragan clutching a Primatial Commission in his hot little hands to "ordain" women for the Diocese of Chichester. On that potentially depressing day Eric came to us at Lancing - he felt so at home singing Pontifical High Mass in Lancing Chapel - and then spent the rest of the day having lunch with us; his face growing redder and redder as the gin ... and the wine ... flowed, and we drowned our sorrows in the traditional Anglo-Catholic way. Memories also of the sermons he preached when Lancing had a head master, formerly head of Rugby, who did not share our foundational Catholicism. Somehow, Eric always seemed to be able to work into his homilies a scathing reference to "the ideas sometimes associated with the name of Thomas Arnold head master of Rugby". It was a commonplace that the Chichester diocese, during his pontificate, was the Indian Summer of the C of E; it was, certainly, of the 'Catholic Movement'. After he retired, the secret police went round the diocese gathering evidence of liturgical 'illegalities', and the rumour was that a man was going to be put in with a clear remit to "bring it back into the Church of England". It is certainly true that under his successor, women began to receive the diocesan license to officiate; and the Roman Rite, for the first time since 1975, began to be persecuted.
Eric had exactly what Manning found so reprehensible in Newman; the old Anglican Oxford Literary Patristic tone. It was a style of theological Anglican Catholicism which read and remembered; which argued and did Divinity in accordance with the rules of evidence and of logic; which was deeply marked by the continuities of the Anglican Catholic tradition stretching back even to Laud and the Non-jurors, and its rootedness in parish church as well as in Cathedral and in library; what Archbishop Michael Ramsey had beautifully called Divinity done within the sound of Church bells. But ...
Sadly, there are some Buts.
Eric was a man completely, totally, out of his age. I have a horrid feeling that the current national enquiry into child abuse will be highly critical of his gullibility in that sphere ... he undoubtedly allowed himself (his autobiography makes this embarrassingly clear) to be completely bamboozled by Bishop Peter Ball (a crook who abused the young on an industrial scale). In the area of 'Church Politics', Kemp's gentle gifts of erudition and rational discourse were naked before the mechanised onslaught of the panzer divisions of Liberalism and Feminism ... he was himself no Guderian; not even a Montgomery. It was under Eric's leadership of the 'Catholic Movement' that, uneasily, we gradually became aware that we were winning every battle, triumphing hands-down in every argument, but unmistakably losing the war. It took some time to realise it, but eventually we identified the great strengths our enemies possessed and which Kemp totally lacked. Their idea of 'discussion' or 'dialogue' meant them shouting abuse until their foes fell silent. They demanded that we 'hear their experience' purely as a preliminary to getting out their cudgels. They would never engage in rational argument because, happy pantomaths, they already knew every answer. They had made bullying into a fine art. To disagree with them was but to manifest one's own psychological problems - one's phobias and hang-ups and prejudices. What defences had we, or the methods by which Divinity had hitherto been done on the banks of the Isis or even of the Cam, against this ruthless and Stalinist totalitarianism and its Dahlek-like appetite for extermination?
Above all, Eric's antipathy towards some of the 'papal claims' sadly prevented him from exploring that avenue to a solution of our problems. Unusually but very perceptively, he believed that Vatican II's teaching on the Petrine Ministry was harder to accept than that of Vatican I! God knows what he would have made of disordered Bergoglian ultrapapalism, but we who knew him can guess.
And only God knows if the Ordinariate project will work out in the longer term. I pray that it will. If it does, this will be the best possible memorial to Eric: to the old Oxford (and Cambridge and Durham) Patristic Tone - the Divinity of Pusey and Keble and Liddon and Neale and Halifax and Dix and Kirk and Jalland and Lewis and Sayers and Kemp and Carpenter and Thornton and Farrer and Mascall and Couratin and Ratcliff and Willis and Chadwick and Moreton and Cross and Kilpatrick - as a living and thriving reality, vigorous in its defence of orthodoxy, fruit of a broad and deep and generous culture, but now, happily, transplanted into a wider Christendom.
And the Anglican Catholic Patrimony has been transplanted, surely, for the good of all Catholic Christians during this current crisis. Papa Ratzinger, who had been watching us carefully for years, replanted us within Christ's Catholic Church Militant here in Earth not for silence and for meekness but so that we can share and proclaim our experience. So that we can tell our fellow Catholics: "If you go down that path, we can explain to you here and now exactly where you will end up. We can show you the map. We have already visited the future ... the future to which Bergoglianism beckons the Catholic Church ...
... and, believe us, that future most certainly does not work."
25 November 2018
Gerhard Cardinal Mueller on Hyperueberultrapapalist Bergoglianism
Two quotations from the latest Mueller interview [the italics are mine]. The whole interview, which is superb, should be read, over at Lifesitenews.
Bergoglianism ... Hyperueberultrapapalism ... one might think of it as Catholic Teaching 'taken a bit further', perhaps 'a bit too far'. Not so. The current error ravaging the Christian Tradition is not more than Catholicism; it is less. It is a radical apostasy from the Catholic Faith. In his Eminence's words, "It is not at all Catholic".
"[The pope's] authority is extended over the revealed Faith of the Catholic Church and not over the individual theological opinions of himself or those of his advisers ... it is irritating that theologically uneducated people are being promoted to the rank of bishops who, in turn, think that they have to thank the pope for it by means of a childish submission ... "
"The Magisterium of the bishops and of the pope stands under the Word of God in Holy Scripture and Tradition and serves Him. It is not at all Catholic to say that the pope as an individual person receives directly from the Holy Spirit the Revelation and that he may now interpret it according to his own whims while all the rest are to follow him blindly and mutely ... revealed truth cannot be toppled by any power in the world, and no Catholic may ever believe the opposite or be forced to accept the opposite."
Bergoglianism ... Hyperueberultrapapalism ... one might think of it as Catholic Teaching 'taken a bit further', perhaps 'a bit too far'. Not so. The current error ravaging the Christian Tradition is not more than Catholicism; it is less. It is a radical apostasy from the Catholic Faith. In his Eminence's words, "It is not at all Catholic".
"[The pope's] authority is extended over the revealed Faith of the Catholic Church and not over the individual theological opinions of himself or those of his advisers ... it is irritating that theologically uneducated people are being promoted to the rank of bishops who, in turn, think that they have to thank the pope for it by means of a childish submission ... "
"The Magisterium of the bishops and of the pope stands under the Word of God in Holy Scripture and Tradition and serves Him. It is not at all Catholic to say that the pope as an individual person receives directly from the Holy Spirit the Revelation and that he may now interpret it according to his own whims while all the rest are to follow him blindly and mutely ... revealed truth cannot be toppled by any power in the world, and no Catholic may ever believe the opposite or be forced to accept the opposite."
24 November 2018
Matthew P Hazell again!
I have often used, and commented about it on this blog, Matthew Hazell's highly important Index Lectionum, which reveals the way Holy Scripture was censored in the post-Conciliar 'reforms'. It is a pleasure to commend his latest scholarly work, The Proper of Time in the Post-Vatican II Liturgical Reforms (ISBN: 978-1-7307-9522-0). It deals with how the euchology ... collects, secrets, postcommunions ... fared during this same period.
To be precise, this book homes in on one particular moment of the 'reform' process, schema 186 of September 1966 ... I will call it '1966'. This important and revealing document is hitherto unpublished. What I find fascinating is the glimpse this gives us of a particular moment in the development of the mindset of the 'reformers'.
1966 is much more conservative than what eventually emerged as the Missal of S Paul VI. Simplifying a little, one could liken 1966 to a garment which has become rather frayed over the years and needs to be repaired. So the authors suggest how it can be repaired, smartened up, and made good for use for another few hundred years. The Missal of S Paul, on the other hand, seems in comparison more like the product of a decision that the garment is totally unfit for use and needs to be dumped, so as to make way for a completely new product.
I offer just one insight into the mindset of the 'reformers': since we are near the start of Advent, let us consider their treatment of the Sunday collects for Advent. Three of these had been addressed to God the Son. The 'reformers' stated that it was now universally agreed that Prayer should be addressed to God the Father through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. What about the collects of Advent? This is what they say: "On account of their antiquity and more venerable character, we have not changed them". Read that again! "We have not changed them"!
See! They still have some sense of respect for the prayers of the ancient formulae! They are not willing to bowdlerise without explicit permission from above!
But in S Paul VI, those Advent collects disappear from the Sundays of Advent. They are removed to weekdays, where some of them (but not all) are reformulated so that they are addressed to the Father.
My own view is that it is precisely the unexpectedly direct appeal to the Lord Jesus Who is coming to judge ("Come Lord ... do not delay ... stir up thy power ...") which gives these old prayers their impassioned sense of direct urgency. Their loss, at the Sunday synaxis, represented a real impoverishment of the spirituality placed before God's people by their Liturgy. They woz robbed!
[Incidentally, the same prejudice against prayers addressed to the Son led the Anglican revisers of the Alternative Service Book (1980) to reconstruct S Thomas's Corpus Christ collect; not even S Paul VI had dared to do this!]
A study of the documents recording the process of the revision of the hymns of the Breviary would reveal exactly the same process by which the Coetus concerned only gradually liberated themselves from respect for Tradition. These studies give the lie to the claim that 'the Council' had mandated the Pauline 'Reform' as that catastrophe eventually emerged. The persons actually engaged on that 'reform' in the mid-1960s were manifestly completely unaware that 'the Council' had mandated anything so radical. This whole narrative reveals the growth of an attitude of bland, insolent, mendacity.
The Missal of S Paul VI is not what the Council Fathers thought they were voting for. That is why even the most soundly traditionalist Fathers, such as Archbishop Lefebvre, voted for Sacrosanctum Concilium.
We cannot expect young and able scholars to produce important work like this book unless we buy and study what they produce!
To be precise, this book homes in on one particular moment of the 'reform' process, schema 186 of September 1966 ... I will call it '1966'. This important and revealing document is hitherto unpublished. What I find fascinating is the glimpse this gives us of a particular moment in the development of the mindset of the 'reformers'.
1966 is much more conservative than what eventually emerged as the Missal of S Paul VI. Simplifying a little, one could liken 1966 to a garment which has become rather frayed over the years and needs to be repaired. So the authors suggest how it can be repaired, smartened up, and made good for use for another few hundred years. The Missal of S Paul, on the other hand, seems in comparison more like the product of a decision that the garment is totally unfit for use and needs to be dumped, so as to make way for a completely new product.
I offer just one insight into the mindset of the 'reformers': since we are near the start of Advent, let us consider their treatment of the Sunday collects for Advent. Three of these had been addressed to God the Son. The 'reformers' stated that it was now universally agreed that Prayer should be addressed to God the Father through the Son, in the Holy Spirit. What about the collects of Advent? This is what they say: "On account of their antiquity and more venerable character, we have not changed them". Read that again! "We have not changed them"!
See! They still have some sense of respect for the prayers of the ancient formulae! They are not willing to bowdlerise without explicit permission from above!
But in S Paul VI, those Advent collects disappear from the Sundays of Advent. They are removed to weekdays, where some of them (but not all) are reformulated so that they are addressed to the Father.
My own view is that it is precisely the unexpectedly direct appeal to the Lord Jesus Who is coming to judge ("Come Lord ... do not delay ... stir up thy power ...") which gives these old prayers their impassioned sense of direct urgency. Their loss, at the Sunday synaxis, represented a real impoverishment of the spirituality placed before God's people by their Liturgy. They woz robbed!
[Incidentally, the same prejudice against prayers addressed to the Son led the Anglican revisers of the Alternative Service Book (1980) to reconstruct S Thomas's Corpus Christ collect; not even S Paul VI had dared to do this!]
A study of the documents recording the process of the revision of the hymns of the Breviary would reveal exactly the same process by which the Coetus concerned only gradually liberated themselves from respect for Tradition. These studies give the lie to the claim that 'the Council' had mandated the Pauline 'Reform' as that catastrophe eventually emerged. The persons actually engaged on that 'reform' in the mid-1960s were manifestly completely unaware that 'the Council' had mandated anything so radical. This whole narrative reveals the growth of an attitude of bland, insolent, mendacity.
The Missal of S Paul VI is not what the Council Fathers thought they were voting for. That is why even the most soundly traditionalist Fathers, such as Archbishop Lefebvre, voted for Sacrosanctum Concilium.
We cannot expect young and able scholars to produce important work like this book unless we buy and study what they produce!
23 November 2018
fromthecardinalsdesk
"I am not at all sure [the definition of Infallibility] will increase the Pope's power - it may restrict it. Hitherto he has done what he would, because its limits were not defined - now he must act by rule."
Splendid News!!
Cardinal Mueller's book, available in Spanish and German, about the Papal Ministry (The Pope: Mission and Mandate) is currently being translated into English.
He writes more and more with the decisive frankness of our own Blessed John Henry Newman. Consider this from his recent interview:
"The primacy of the Pope is being undermined by the sycophants and careerists at the papal court."
Increasingly I wonder if this might be the man to clear up the mess which will have been left by PF. As well as every other reason, there is the fact that Mueller knows where the bodies are buried.
God bless him for all that he does for Jesus Christ.
He writes more and more with the decisive frankness of our own Blessed John Henry Newman. Consider this from his recent interview:
"The primacy of the Pope is being undermined by the sycophants and careerists at the papal court."
Increasingly I wonder if this might be the man to clear up the mess which will have been left by PF. As well as every other reason, there is the fact that Mueller knows where the bodies are buried.
God bless him for all that he does for Jesus Christ.
21 November 2018
Comments ... and Can The Pope Cancel Summorum Pontificum?
Back now at my computer, I have looked through the Comments and enabled most of them. I gave thumbs-down to one or two which seemed to me to tip over the boundary between reasoned criticism of the current regime in Rome into mere abuse of our Holy Father.
I see that the fear has again surfaced that PF might cancel Summorum Pontificum. I think about five years ago I wrote a piece on this which I delivered to one or two groups, including one meeting in the Brompton Oratory. Since my 'Documents' section has a press-ready copy of it, I may have given it to some journal to print. If anyone can tell me where I have delivered it or where it may have appeared in print, I would be grateful.
My point was that this is a theological question and not primarily canonical; and that it would be ultra vires for any pope to claim to suppress SP.
Pretty obvious, really.
I see that the fear has again surfaced that PF might cancel Summorum Pontificum. I think about five years ago I wrote a piece on this which I delivered to one or two groups, including one meeting in the Brompton Oratory. Since my 'Documents' section has a press-ready copy of it, I may have given it to some journal to print. If anyone can tell me where I have delivered it or where it may have appeared in print, I would be grateful.
My point was that this is a theological question and not primarily canonical; and that it would be ultra vires for any pope to claim to suppress SP.
Pretty obvious, really.
20 November 2018
Preaching coram Sanctissimo
It is a matter of great satisfaction to all right-thinking people that the English RC Church is increasingly recovering the extra-liturgical use of the Blessed Sacrament in Benediction and Exposition. I hope mention of one detail will not seem grudging.
I have seen Benediction which is interrupted after O Salutaris for a sermon. To my Anglican-trained temperament, it seems highly inappropriate that the Blessed Sacrament, exposed in the monstrance, should be unregarded while the congregation sits down and attends to a homilist. O'Connell shares my instinct; sermons, he tells us, are discouraged during the Quarant'Ore although they may be tolerated if they are about the Eucharist. And he emphasises that it is unseemly for people to turn their backs on the Sacrament.
The old Anglo-Catholic practice was Evensong, Sermon, and Benediction. If it is desired to have a sermon at Benediction on its own, would it not be best to have it before the Sacrament is exposed? And, to give proper dignity to the Proclaimed Word, could not a passage of Scripture be read before the homily? Preceded, perhaps, by In nomine ... and Dominus vobiscum?
I have seen Benediction which is interrupted after O Salutaris for a sermon. To my Anglican-trained temperament, it seems highly inappropriate that the Blessed Sacrament, exposed in the monstrance, should be unregarded while the congregation sits down and attends to a homilist. O'Connell shares my instinct; sermons, he tells us, are discouraged during the Quarant'Ore although they may be tolerated if they are about the Eucharist. And he emphasises that it is unseemly for people to turn their backs on the Sacrament.
The old Anglo-Catholic practice was Evensong, Sermon, and Benediction. If it is desired to have a sermon at Benediction on its own, would it not be best to have it before the Sacrament is exposed? And, to give proper dignity to the Proclaimed Word, could not a passage of Scripture be read before the homily? Preceded, perhaps, by In nomine ... and Dominus vobiscum?
19 November 2018
Transphobia, fox hunting, and the SS
The young people ... no; some of the young people ... in this University are having a fine time emulating the Geheime Staatspolizei; or combining the Thought Police of 1984 with a dash of the spirit of the English Foxhunt. They have found a Professor of Sociology who has manifested a failure to believe in some currently prescribed Aeschrodoxies. Tally Ho is the order of the day!
This academic has actually written:
"Transphobia is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons".
You could hardly be more succinct than that, could you? Here's a slightly longer piece from his pen:
"I treat students and colleagues with respect and so would never call a member of the University by a pronoun which he or she found objectionable. I do not, however, believe that gender identity supersedes sex, any more than I believe that Jesus was the son of God. Therefore I oppose any attempt by the University to establish an official doctrine on gender, just as I would oppose the imposition of a single religion or one particular position on Israel-Palestine. The enforcement of orthodoxy - often disguised as 'diversity' - would destroy the University's very foundation: academic freedom."
He just doesn't get it, does he?
Apparently, we have an 'Oxford University LGBTQ+ Society'; and it has a 'Vice Chair' [when I was an undergraduate, such terminology would have elicited adolescent jokes about vice and about people sitting on people ... ah, the child-like innocence of the 1960s!] who is a "trans woman". This person has commented " ... those views [cannot] be left completely outside of a lecture hall. I really worry for any trans students that have to work with him. I would be very uncomfortable around him knowing his views".
[Philological Notes: (1) why, nowadays, do we ... apparently ... have to say 'outside of ' rather than just 'outside'? Is it part of a common shift whereby more and more words are deemed to need previously unnecessary reinforcers, so that, ex gr, we are not now allowed to retreat; we can only retreat back.?
(2) I am curious about the phrase 'to be around ' somebody.]
We also have a 'Pro-vice chancellor for equality and diversity'.
Tyranny often leads to the multiplication of impressively, pathetically prolix ranks and titles, doesn't it? Obersturmbanfuehrer, and all that. Don't we just love it all! Bring it on, Herr Himmler!
But perhaps the children have already killed their fox, or run him to earth. Apparently, complaints were handed to the University in June and the 'account's' last activity was on July 1.
This academic has actually written:
"Transphobia is a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons".
You could hardly be more succinct than that, could you? Here's a slightly longer piece from his pen:
"I treat students and colleagues with respect and so would never call a member of the University by a pronoun which he or she found objectionable. I do not, however, believe that gender identity supersedes sex, any more than I believe that Jesus was the son of God. Therefore I oppose any attempt by the University to establish an official doctrine on gender, just as I would oppose the imposition of a single religion or one particular position on Israel-Palestine. The enforcement of orthodoxy - often disguised as 'diversity' - would destroy the University's very foundation: academic freedom."
He just doesn't get it, does he?
Apparently, we have an 'Oxford University LGBTQ+ Society'; and it has a 'Vice Chair' [when I was an undergraduate, such terminology would have elicited adolescent jokes about vice and about people sitting on people ... ah, the child-like innocence of the 1960s!] who is a "trans woman". This person has commented " ... those views [cannot] be left completely outside of a lecture hall. I really worry for any trans students that have to work with him. I would be very uncomfortable around him knowing his views".
[Philological Notes: (1) why, nowadays, do we ... apparently ... have to say 'outside of ' rather than just 'outside'? Is it part of a common shift whereby more and more words are deemed to need previously unnecessary reinforcers, so that, ex gr, we are not now allowed to retreat; we can only retreat back.?
(2) I am curious about the phrase 'to be around ' somebody.]
We also have a 'Pro-vice chancellor for equality and diversity'.
Tyranny often leads to the multiplication of impressively, pathetically prolix ranks and titles, doesn't it? Obersturmbanfuehrer, and all that. Don't we just love it all! Bring it on, Herr Himmler!
But perhaps the children have already killed their fox, or run him to earth. Apparently, complaints were handed to the University in June and the 'account's' last activity was on July 1.
18 November 2018
Holy Busyness
An old post, with an old thread.
Fr Colin Stephenson, Vicar of S Mary Mags, Oxford, during its Anglopapalist heyday, recalls someone saying to him:
"I shall never forget the first time I went into S Mary Magdalen's, there were two priests hearing confessions, a Mass was being said at one of the altars, and there was Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in the Lady Chapel".
I remember analogous remarks being made about the scenes in Alyoggers, the Oxford Oratory, during the Visit there in 2010 of the Relic of S Therese. They call to my mind the scene described by Newman towards the end of Loss and Gain: "There were side-altars - perhaps half a dozen; most of them without lights, but even here solitary worshippers might be seen. Over one was a large Crucifix with a lamp, and this had a succession of visitors. They came for five minutes, said some prayers which were attached in a glazed frame to the rail, and passed away. At another ... over it was an image. On looking attentively, Charles made out at last that it was an image of our Lady, and the Child held out a Rosary. Here a congregation had already assembled, or rather was in the middle of some service ... Reding turned his eyes elsewhere. They fell first on one, then on another confessional, round each of which was a little crowd , kneeling, waiting every one his own turn ... the men on one side, the women on the other ... the growing object of attention at present was the High Altar [which was being prepared for Benediction]... "
Come to think of it; isn't this a bit like a Greek church with members of the congregation sauntering around to their favourite ikons? The one I used to attend in the Camberwell New Road seemed, whenever I peeped out from behind the iconostasis, terribly 'busy'.
I think busyness attracts; is 'evangelical'. Not least because it helps the random visitor to feel un-self-conscious.
Fr Colin Stephenson, Vicar of S Mary Mags, Oxford, during its Anglopapalist heyday, recalls someone saying to him:
"I shall never forget the first time I went into S Mary Magdalen's, there were two priests hearing confessions, a Mass was being said at one of the altars, and there was Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament in the Lady Chapel".
I remember analogous remarks being made about the scenes in Alyoggers, the Oxford Oratory, during the Visit there in 2010 of the Relic of S Therese. They call to my mind the scene described by Newman towards the end of Loss and Gain: "There were side-altars - perhaps half a dozen; most of them without lights, but even here solitary worshippers might be seen. Over one was a large Crucifix with a lamp, and this had a succession of visitors. They came for five minutes, said some prayers which were attached in a glazed frame to the rail, and passed away. At another ... over it was an image. On looking attentively, Charles made out at last that it was an image of our Lady, and the Child held out a Rosary. Here a congregation had already assembled, or rather was in the middle of some service ... Reding turned his eyes elsewhere. They fell first on one, then on another confessional, round each of which was a little crowd , kneeling, waiting every one his own turn ... the men on one side, the women on the other ... the growing object of attention at present was the High Altar [which was being prepared for Benediction]... "
Come to think of it; isn't this a bit like a Greek church with members of the congregation sauntering around to their favourite ikons? The one I used to attend in the Camberwell New Road seemed, whenever I peeped out from behind the iconostasis, terribly 'busy'.
I think busyness attracts; is 'evangelical'. Not least because it helps the random visitor to feel un-self-conscious.
16 November 2018
G G Willis and the Roman Canon
Apologies to those of you who get tired of reading me thrusting down your throats the inherited wisdom of the Anglican Catholic tradition; but I can't help being what I am. Today, something written in 1969 by one of our greatest liturgical Anglican scholars, Dr G G Willis. He praises a translation of the Canon which is more or less what the Ordinariate Rite contains ('superb translation ...superlative style ... outstanding ...') and advises its adoption rather than that of a Hyppolytean Canon. "In liturgical quality, both of language and structure, it excels all other eucharistic rites ...the only rite known to Englishmen for nearly a thousand years ... It says what many people want to say at the altar, and its use would draw the Church of England closer to countless other Western Christians, and would therefore have great value in knitting together the splintered unity of Christ's Church. Such a suggestion is worthy of serious consideration. ... the Roman Canon is the best one available, .. falling into three clearly defined stages, the offering of the gifts of bread and wine to God, their consecration by the recital of the dominical Institution, and their offering to God as the Body and Blood of Christ. It is time for the Church of England to forsake inveterate prejudices derived from Reformation Protestantism, and to accomplish something in liturgical revision which would give unity and peace on the basis of an ancient and well-tried form of prayer".
The poignancy of these words, written at just the moment when disaster was about to strike the Roman Rite, surely increases their force. In a paper written two years later in 1971, Willis wrote: "nothing is clearer to the student of liturgical history in the whole of Christendom than that the best and most enduring liturgy arises out of the past experiences of worshippers. This suggests that revision should arise, and should be seen to arise, out of what went before". This is almost a paraphrase of that paragraph in Sacrosanctum Concilium (23) which was so strikingly contradicted when Rome authorised alternative Eucharistic Prayers.
Learn from the Anglican Patrimony; follow the Ordinariates. The Roman Canon is the only Eucharistic Prayer for right-thinking Latin Clergy to use.
The poignancy of these words, written at just the moment when disaster was about to strike the Roman Rite, surely increases their force. In a paper written two years later in 1971, Willis wrote: "nothing is clearer to the student of liturgical history in the whole of Christendom than that the best and most enduring liturgy arises out of the past experiences of worshippers. This suggests that revision should arise, and should be seen to arise, out of what went before". This is almost a paraphrase of that paragraph in Sacrosanctum Concilium (23) which was so strikingly contradicted when Rome authorised alternative Eucharistic Prayers.
Learn from the Anglican Patrimony; follow the Ordinariates. The Roman Canon is the only Eucharistic Prayer for right-thinking Latin Clergy to use.
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